Twitter is starting to reveal pricing for its new API. And these figures are very, very high.
Twitter is finally starting to price its paid API offerings after announcing that free access will be cut soon. And the least we can do is that it’s not given. Current API users have begun receiving emails from the company detailing paid offerings. According to Wired’s Chris Stockel-Walker, accessing the Enterprise API can cost millions of dollars a year.
Twitter begins to reveal pricing for its new API
Documents sent to users detail offers starting at $42,000 per month for access to 50 million tweets. The price goes up to 210,000 per month for the highest offer with 200 million tweets. An intermediate offer with 100 million tweets is being offered for $125,000. I’m surprised the price hasn’t come down. For example, 100 million tweets should be offered at $84,000, double the lowest price, but Twitter is asking for $125,000.
Prior to Elon Musk’s rise to power, Twitter offered a very generous free offer of its API. There were offers “Premium”and “Enterprise”. The first cost $2,899 per month. And only companies with more than 250 users were eligible for the Enterprise offer. The cost was studied on a case-by-case basis.
And those numbers are very, very high.
In addition to these very high prices, under the new rules, the most affordable offer only offers access to 0.3% of tweets, while the soon-to-be-expired free offer is 1%. Researchers represent a large proportion of API users. Many have pointed out that such rates make the API unusable.
Elon Musk’s decision to ditch the free API has drawn widespread criticism. Many bots and automatic accounts were already planning to close rather than pay. In response, Elon Musk changed his plans somewhat and stated that Twitter would continue to offer read-only access with low limits for free projects. And if it’s not official, the American multibillionaire has also floated the idea of charging around $100 a month for more basic access for smaller projects and startups that are funded by their creators.
Here are the documents. “Big Package”- $210,000/month or $2.5M/year (@techmeme hint) https://t.co/RfGyWqpIgF pic.twitter.com/xuBiCBzoe7
— Chris Stokel-Walker ~ @stokel@infosec.exchange (@stokel) March 10, 2023